Meeting of the Parliament 05 February 2025
I agree with the cabinet secretary and Mr Rennie that education is a vital tool in tackling poverty. Giving our young people the best education possible gives them the skills to build a better life. A quality education system is not a luxury but an essential building block for a thriving nation such as Scotland in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, I disagree with the cabinet secretary in this regard—the impression of our education system that she gave in her speech is not the one that I get told about or that I have seen over the past number of years. We must be honest that, according to our programme for international student assessment ranking, attainment in maths is at a record low and attainment in science is not far behind. The gap in attainment between the richest and the poorest children in Scotland remains far too wide, even though the Scottish Government says that that issue is its number 1 priority.
Teachers have an almost impossible job now. As others have indicated, we are asking teachers to teach and to be, almost, social workers. We need to get back to the core. As Mr Rennie pointed out, we need teachers to be teaching and doing what they have been trained to do.
When I look at the city of Edinburgh, I see that, on one bus route, one school is doing very well and another is failing academically. That cannot be right in Scotland in the 21st century. Too often, the Government wants to point the finger at other people. This afternoon, we have again heard that the situation is partly to do with the pandemic, but the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said that the issues were there before Covid and did not just start in the past four or five years.